According to 1996 DPOY Gary Payton, he would make it hard for Stephen Curry to get the basketball and let the four other players play.
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Despite the Golden State Warriors trailing the Boston Celtics 1-2 in the 2022 NBA Finals, Stephen Curry has been on a tear. In the 3 games so far, the 2-time MVP has put up a staggering 31.3 points, 5 rebounds, and 3.7 assists on a 48.5/48.6/83.3 shooting split.
During the clash against the Celtics, mainly being guarded by DPOY Marcus Smart, Steph has seen all possible kinds of defense played against him – the box-and-one, double-team, triple-teamed, among several other defensive strategies.
Former NBA legend Gary Payton, a defensive menace back in his days, recently shared a few tips on how the Cs should guard Curry. The 1-time DPOY also revealed how he would’ve guarded the GSW sharpshooter.
“You have to put your body on Stephen Curry”: Gary Payton
On a recent appearance on JJ Redick’s “The Old Man and the Three” podcast, after Game 1 of the series, Payton shared his solution to preventing Chef Curry from a scoring rampage. The Hall-Of-Famer said:
“Steph, you have to put your body on him. Did you see what Smart did last night? He got into him a little bit. When you let him be free, you see the first three quarters what he did. In the first half, he was just free, free, free, couldn’t nobody stop him. He was stepping back, shooting threes.
“Then when Smart got into him a little bit, it took away a lot of it because he was pressuring. And then what it does is make the other people who got the basketball, they see that Steph is getting really really hounded. What do they do? They go away from him because they don’t want to turn the basketball over they don’t want to give it to him. Then they try to do things they can’t. And that’s what happened.”
“When we used to play we used a hedge and just trap. Once we trap the basketball and get the ball out of his hand, what my job was is deny him getting the basketball. Make it hard for him to get the basketball. I’ll deny him and let them four other players play.”
Despite having a pretty attractive stat line in these finals, Steph has been far from productive in the 4th quarters of all three games.
With Smart being the primary defender, Steph has had a lot of trouble.
Also Read: Gary Payton has nothing but respect for the 2022 DPOY, praised Celtics guard ahead of Game 2
Boston will hope to prevent Curry from going on yet another scoring spree in Game 4. However, knowing Curry, after the previous game’s loss, he is going to enter tomorrow’s clash with all guns blazing.
